Claypole (Argentina) (AFP) – The economic losers on Sunday, the disabled on Monday: Pope Leo
Published on: 09/11/2026 - 15:08
“The progress of a nation is measured (...) by the welcome it gives to all people with disabilities or those with specific needs,” said the sovereign pontiff, who was visiting a charitable institution welcoming 410 residents with severe disabilities, in Claypole, an hour from Buenos Aires.
Just before his visit, closed to the public, several tens of thousands of people had gathered on a one-kilometer journey, carried out in a popemobile by Leo XIV. An enthusiastic crowd, both moved and proud of the Pope's visit to the disabled.
“We must always think of the most humble of our homeland, who today are so abandoned,” Ana Trucco, a 22-year-old student, told AFP. “That Pope Leo comes, with the legacy of (his Argentinian predecessor) Francis, to speak to these people, that seems extremely important to me.”
“Triumph over exclusion”
The Cottolengo de Claypole, founded in 1936, is a village-like home with its streets, its central square, its church, which accommodates residents with multiple severe, neurological or psychomotor disabilities, surrounded by 380 caregivers.
The values of “dignity, integration and friendship” of places like Cottolengo “have a lot to bring to our societies, often guided solely by the search for economic success or the cult of physical appearance,” continued Leo XIV.
He expressed the hope "that Argentina would be capable of carrying out great works of charity, as we see here, where the love of Christ triumphs over individualism and exclusion."
During his visit of about an hour, he received testimonies from two residents, and visited, away from the cameras, a pavilion housing people with the most severe disabilities.
“For many years I traveled many places looking for a place to live (...) Until the day I met Cottolengo,” Marta Torres, blind and suffering from cerebral palsy, abandoned by her mother as a child, told the Pope, in her dependency chair.
“The Cottolengo was for me a beacon that illuminated my life. Not just a place to live, but a place where I was welcomed, accommodated and loved,” she continued, a caregiver whispering her brief testimony in her ear.
“They helped me to no longer feel rejected, because by going back and forth, searching without finding, I felt left out. But here, I feel so happy that everything is fine, all that is behind me,” Marta concluded, before giving the Pope a book she wrote about her life.
Disability vs Mathematics
The papal spotlight on Cottolengo, nicknamed "the little town of charity", comes in the wake of a tense budgetary debate in Argentina on disability.
The executive of the ultra-liberal Milei planned a reform of the benefit system, denounced by associations and the opposition as a disguised budgetary adjustment.
The Episcopal Commission issued a call to order, estimating in a text entitled "the fragility which humanizes us", that "faced with fragility, the State's response must not be reduced to a mathematical equation".
“People with disabilities are a priority for the government,” the presidential spokesperson had to reassure, in the midst of the controversy.
Parliamentary negotiations since then have finally made it possible to maintain, for 2027, the budget for an “emergency disability law” adopted in 2025. In time for the arrival of the sovereign pontiff.
The 71-year-old pope arrived in Argentina on Sunday, the second stop, between Uruguay and Peru, of an intense 12-day tour of Latin America, his first trip after an operation for lung cancer four weeks ago.
On Sunday, in a speech with a marked social tone before civil authorities including Javier Milei, he affirmed that the economy must be "at the service of the person, and not the person at the service of the economy". Strong message, in a country where the local Church has often criticized the social cost of the current ultraliberal government's austerity.
ide-mry/pbl/eba
© 2026 AFP
The content you are trying to access does not exist or is no longer available.
